A Condition is a description of an object such as a wall, ceiling, or a door, etc., and includes all the Materials and Labor necessary to build the object (see previous article for more details). Conditions are built for each unique building objects, for example, in a typical building, an estimator may need separate Conditions for various wall heights. There are three basic types of Conditions: Area (SF, SY, m2, etc.), Linear (LF, LY, mm, mm, etc.), and Count (EA).
Building a Condition involves adding Items to a Condition to specify Materials and Labor required to build the Condition. Building Conditions is the main activity of pricing a Bid. If you've taken the time to setup your database defaults and options, almost everything else can be added automatically to the Material and Labor costs as you add Items to your Conditions.
Each Condition may be associated with multiple Bid Areas within a project. For example, a Condition such as "10' Interior Wall" probably occurs on multiple floors within a project. There is no need to create that Condition multiple times - as long as the height is the same and the Condition is built the same way; simply use the Areas function to assign quantity to different floors. See Related articles for more information.
Typical Areas - A project may include parts of a building that, taken together, form a "Typical Area" - something such as identical apartment units, hotel suites, townhouses, lobby areas, and rest room/mechanical room combinations. These Typical Area each include several Conditions (walls, floors, windows, wiring, etc.). Quick Bid's "Typical Areas" feature allows you to assign Condition Quantity to a Typical Area and then specify how many times that Typical Area occurs within each Bid Area. When properly entered, Quick Bid can break out reports for each typical unit, each floor, each building, or report a grand total for the project. See Related articles for more information.
The first step after creating a Bid is to create Conditions. There are five ways to create Conditions:
- A Condition can be built from scratch, covered below
- A Condition can be created by duplicating an existing Condition (or duplicating multiple Conditions)
- You can copy and paste Conditions from one Bid to another (or from a base Bid to an Alternate or Change Order)
- You can import a Quantity Survey from Excel
- If you're working in an Interactive Bid, Conditions must be created in On-Screen Takeoff, they are created automatically in Quick Bid (same goes for duplicating and copying/pasting Conditions in On-Screen Takeoff)
We explain how to add a
Condition from scratch below. Copying and Pasting Conditions, Duplicating Conditions, and Importing a Quantity Survey are covered in articles that follow.
Creating a Condition from Scratch
Remember, when using On-Screen Takeoff and Quick Bid interactively, all Conditions, Areas, and Typical Areas are created in On-Screen Takeoff. See previous articles for more information on using OST and QB interactively.
To create a new Condition,
Click on the Conditions Tab
- Press the <Insert> key, or
- Click File > New > Condition, or
- Click the New drop down
and click Condition, or
- Right-click in the Conditions Tab window and select New Condition
The Condition Detail dialog opens (see the next article for information on the Condition Detail screen).
Enter information in the Condition Detail dialog to build the Condition. We cover the Condition Detail in just a few articles. First, let's cover the other three ways to create Conditions in Quick Bid.
What Are Conditions and How Are They Created?